Crack

Crack is bad for you and bad for your neighborhood. Here is more proof.

Space

Whoa! I haven't posted since December 2nd. That's my biggest gap yet I think. This post is here to fill space until my next upcoming post. I have all sorts of post ideas piled up in my head that haven't sat down and written out. I guess I've just been focused on other things lately. For today and for now I'll just post this photo of Arnold and also a photo of Guy Smiley.

Who is Guy Smiley.

Toothbrush

This is madness. Why on earth does anyone need a toothbrush with an on-board computer? The list price of this Oral-B Triumph toothbrush is $140. Amazon has it for around $95.

I've used electric brushes in the past but I haven't for a long time now. Electric toothbrush I understand. Electric toothbrush with on-board computer? Now that's just plain unnecessary.

Manual toothbrushes have come a long way. They aren't just flat bristles in the shape of a rectangle anymore. I like the Active Angle, the Navigator, and the Wave Colgate brushes. I like the Oral-B CrossAction brush a lot too. Sometimes I have trouble finding them at the store because I always need the compact head with soft bristles style. If I don't use the compact head size I find that there isn't enough room to maneuver. I don't know why all the other sizes are so much more common. I'd guess that everyone else besides me must have smaller teeth or bigger mouths. I think I have bigger teeth. I have all of them that are in the diagram below except for a bicuspid from each quadrant. I had the 4 of them pulled when I was 12 and right before I got my braces.

Saturday Morning Cartunes with Dietrich

Sometimes I wonder what radio DJ's I hear look like. When I hear Dietrich from the Saturday morning 6-9AM slot on WMSE I picture Lieut. Dan from Forrest Gump. I shouldn't be surprised if Dietrich looks nothing like this but I bet he did at one time. At the same time Gary Sinise doesn't sound anything like Dietrich does. I also wonder about Haven from the same time slot on Wednesday mornings. She sounds very much like a former friend of mine from my early college years and I have a hard time getting that out of my head when I hear the radio on Wednesday mornings. It's uncanny. It's like they were separated at birth or something. I'll bet she looks nothing at all like I imagine.

I'll have to go to a radio station event sometime to find out what everybody looks like. I think they have a chili cookoff or something every year. I'm not sure when that is. I think Dietrich said this morning that he might check out the Primus show tonight at the Rave. Maybe I'll go to that and see if I'm able to find a guy that looks like Lieut. Dan but with legs.

Turns out Doogie Howser is gay

That surprises me. It really does. I found out today from a friend that Doogie Howser disclosed that he's gay. According to the news story here he says he's "a very content gay man". Who are we going to hear that from next? That Fred Savage guy from the Wonder Years? My friend also heard a rumor Kirk Hammett from Metallica was gay too. I researched that a little as well but I couldn't find anything. That appears to be hearsay. Not that it matters gay or straight but I hated that Doogie Howser show. Same thing with the Wonder Years. I had a roommate in college that liked both shows and watched them all the time in reruns which were on constantly around the time. It just made me hate them more. They were just such utterly stupid TV shows.

Sick Dog

Jon Carry Banner

"Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." -Sen. John Kerry

My opinion is this. I don't think he intentionally set out to insult our armed forces in Iraq. The words that he said probably didn't come out as planned but I think reflect his true beliefs about A. the intelligence level of a person who chooses to serve in the military in the absence of a draft and B. the reasons they choose to serve in the military. I'm not buying that it was a botched joke. What was the joke supposed to be again? Then he at first refuses to apologize but then laters caves into the pressure and does so. That's revealing in and of itself.


The Soldiers Behind the Banner from the blog of Charlie Sykes

I killed rabbits

I shot them. This was many years ago now. I think I was still living at home at the time. We had problems with them eating the garden or plants or something so we kept a pellet gun handy in case we spotted any of them. My mom gave my dad and I the go ahead to kill them. The first one I killed I shot from about 20 yards straight into the rabbits' ear. It was a good shot I thought. It dropped dead instantly right where it sat. The second rabbit I killed first ran off to the neighbors yard. My dad circled around to scare it back toward me. I think it died a shot or 2 later but it was more of a challenge and involved some tactics and strategy. If I remember correctly one of my shots went into its' ear just like my first one. Now the last rabbit I killed I still feel a little bad about. As I approached I could see that it was a pretty small one. It didn't run or anything. I walked right up to it and shot it at pretty close range. I remember beforehand standing there wondering whether I was going to listen to my conscience or to my mother. This one was just too easy. I chose the latter but after that I didn't want to kill any more rabbits. That was the last thing I ever killed. Since then I've only shot at soda cans in the backyard or at pieces of paper at the range.

That same summer was the time when we got a visit from a policeman at our house. Our back yard has a wood fence around it and bushes but apparently a passerby saw us with the pellet gun and called the police on us. I think we stepped outside the fence to see if a rabbit ran that way when they saw I had it. We found out it's against the law to fire a weapon of any kind within our village. I guess that makes sense but whatever. Who gives a rip about hunting rabbits with a pellet gun? It's not like it was a .22 or something. We checked with all our neighbors and they didn't care. They wanted the rabbits gone as much as we did. They were a real problem that year.

Pumpkins

I should carve a pumpkin this year. I don't think I've done it for a long time.

These are from my archive of dumb pictures I either got in my email or found on the internet.

Google Satellite Image

During the summer I often ride loops on this road that circles a park near where I live. It's technically in the park so there's not much traffic. Most of the traffic is people walking their dogs, or joggers, roller-bladers, and other bikers. It's just under a mile and 3/4 around. I usually do an equal number of loops in each direction starting with counterclockwise loops. It's not completely flat but it doesn't have any gigantic hills either. It's just hilly enough to make it interesting and different depending on which way around your going. I put together this aerial view of it using the satellite map thing on Google maps. I zoomed in as far as it would go and did a bunch of screenshots and then pasted them all together. I'd never seen the park from that perspective before so I thought it was interesting. At first I considered putting together an aerial view like this of my entire route that I go on from my house to this park. I decided against it because at this zoom level it would take forever and it would be one very gigantic image. And what would the point of it be anyway? The park is more interesting than any other part of my route.

Rest Stop

I rented Rest Stop (official site here) last night. I never heard of it before but it looked interesting enough. It was pretty terrible. Much less than I expected and I didn't expect much. I give it only a 1/2 star out of 5 possible. It had music from the Black Keys in it and at least 2 really sick scenes but other than that nothing going for it. In retrospect I'd rather that I still had my $4.50 and used that hour and half of my life for something else. I think this was even worse than High Tension.

Final 2006 Miles

I decided I may as well call it a year. I've already put the glass in my storm door instead of the screen and my furnace is running as of the middle of last week. It seems much too early for that but it was 62 degrees in my house before I flipped the switch on that. So since there's a great likelihood that biking is done for the year I redid my chart with all my cumulative miles from this year and last year. It didn't turn out as terrible as I originally thought it might when I first created the chart in August. If it weren't for my long inactive period from early June to the latter half of July I'd be pretty much in line with 2005. Next year I plan on needing to adjust the table to include numbers above 800. A lot will depend on getting a good start and the weather, but that's my plan right now. My 2005 total was 716 miles and this year it was a mere 434 miles.

Slo-mo Home Depot

This is another great gag I ran into a few weeks ago. Improv Anywhere got about 225 people to shop at Home Depot in Manhattan in slow motion for 5 minutes. Then after a 5 minute break freeze in place completely for 5 minutes. See the entire explanation and videos of it all here.

155 t-shirts at once

I love when people do crazy stuff like this. I saw a different guy a few weeks back with 121 shirts at one time. What's next?

Line Rider

I ran into this line rider thing a week or so ago. I'm not very good at it so far. There was also a link to this example which probably took an pretty good amount of time to create. I think I know what I'm doing during my lunch hours this week.

Smith

The only new show I started watching this fall is cancelled already. I watch The Unit with Dennis Haysbert which is back for its' second season and Smith was on in the time slot after that on Tuesday at 9:00. I didn't have anything better to do the first night it was on so I watched it. It wasn't great. I didn't think I'd even watch it again but I did. The second episode hooked me in completely. It's one of those shows that follows the bad guys in the same way as The Sopranos does. You find yourself in place where your sort of rooting for thieves. I can hardly believe it was so unpopular that they ditched it. I think there were only 3 episodes on altogether. It had Ray Liota in it and Amy Smart from The Butterfly Effect. Even a bad show with Amy Smart in it might be worth watching but it wasn't a bad show. I'm bummed. I like a good story and now I'll never know how it ends. Damn you CBS!

Don't shop at Undergroundtown.com

I got another one. Don't buy anything from Undergroundtown on eBay.

I've only been ripped off on by sellers on eBay twice over the last 6 years or so. I've purchased nearly 100 things from almost as many sellers and now it's a pretty safe bet I'm never going to see the Prometheus CD I bought from this guy. I bought it in June for $17.95 with the shipping. I hoped it would come before I left town on vacation but it didn't. I was surprised not to see it in my pile of mail when I got back in July. I emailed the guy and got one response back after my third email. He apologized, claimed things had gotten crazy and that he had, had a lot of spam but said he'd send it out right away. It never came. Things got busy and before I knew it the time passed where I could get my money back through Paypal. I emailed a few more times with no reply. I used the dispute console on eBay to report a non-delivery on a seller at around the 60 day mark. He got back to me on that and apologized again and said he'd send it along with an extra CD for my trouble. Nothing ever came. A couple messages later via this dispute console thing he admitted he didn't even have one to send but would get one in and send it. A dispute only stays open for 90 days after you initiate it and now we're past that and it closed. I've emailed a couple times but it's safe to say I'm never going to hear anything or get my CD. I posted negative feedback a long time ago. It was his first negative feedback ever. I even bought a CD from him before all this and things went fine. I see that recently he's gotten a whole bunch more negative feedback ratings....12 in the last month from others who were also ripped off and angry. Today I emailed him and told him he was going to hell when he dies if he doesn't send me my CD or find Jesus. I hope he does both although the latter is far more important.

Don't shop at Bike n Ski

At the Maywood Earth Ride I was the winner of a pair of cycling gloves from Bike'n Ski. I never won a door prize anywhere before where the odds were so slim so I thought that it was pretty cool no matter what it was. I went to the information desk to pick them up but they only had medium and small sizes. The Maywood volunteer kindly wrote down directions for me to get to the Bike'n Ski shop which was right there in downtown Sheboygan so I could exchange the pair they gave me for a large. This is where the experience goes south. On the drive over I contemplated whether or not this was just a clever scheme to get me in the store. I had dismissed the idea but when I first got there the guy was already helping some other people so if that was their plan it was working so far. I am afterall in the market for a new bike and I've also been considering a new helmet. I browsed the store and eventually found the gloves. They didn't appear to have any large on the rack but I figured I'd wait and see what the guy said. Soon he was free and I explained the situation. He walked over to the same rack as I had and made the same discovery. The first solution was for me to come back when they had some available but I explained that that wouldn't be practical since I don't live in the area. It's probably a good and hour and 15 minute drive one way for me. There were some other gloves on the same rack that were the same brand but a different style. They did have large ones there and so I suggested that since they didn't have the others I would be willing to take one of those and just pay any difference in cash. He said, "No I can't do that. It's a donation and donations don't work that way". Can you believe that? I mean I believe one should be happy with what you have. A gift is a gift, and a prize is a prize, but the fact is it's not at all a prize for me if it doesn't fit me. I'd understand his position if say for example I had won a 19" TV or something and I just didn't like it or have a use for it. Then I came in and said what I would really like to do is exchange for this 27" TV....pay the difference etc. Now that would take balls. But this is entirely different. We're not talking about something that I didn't like or isn't what I wanted. I'm not unhappy winning gloves. I'm not unhappy with the particular brand or style of them but the issue is their size. If you're going to give away something like gloves where the fit of them is a rather critical element at least have all sizes available. At the very least be willing to work something out if the sizes available don't fit the winner. What do they do when they give away a bike? This isn't rocket science. Isn't part of the purpose of being a ride sponsor and donating door prizes to promote the business? That was working until I started talking to the guy that was working there that day. They got the right idea being sponsors and donating door prizes but their customer service sure sucks. Needless to say they lost any business that I might have given them. I left unhappy and not feeling much like a winner at all. I'd advise against shopping there. Buy your bikes and gear where they care about making customers happy.

Maywood 2005

This is from last year. My aunt, who told me about this event in the first place, cut this from one of the papers up there. She had no idea I was actually in the photo. What are the chances? I scanned it and put an arrow pointing at me because you can't really tell which one is me without it since I'm in the distance.

Maywood 2006

I look forward to the Maywood Earth Ride all year and yesterday it was on another beautiful September day like every other year I've done it. It was much windier that usual, and usually it is windy. Flags were straight out on their poles so riding South into the wind was challenging.

The first year I did this ride (2004) I did the 25 mile route and it felt like I finished before I was even started. Last year I did the 50 mile route and it was more challenging than I anticipated. As it turned out the route wasn't just more of the same but instead it included a stretch of road that goes up and down and over some steep hills like a roller coaster. The loop back was on different roads but the hills were similar. Because I had no idea it would be like that, my pacing was all messed up and so I was pretty well tapped out by the 35 mile mark. It didn't help either that I had skipped the first rest area and the chance to eat something there or that I had, had the flu earlier in that week.

This year I chose the 25 mile route when I registered. I later thought that maybe I would finish the 25 miles and then start from the beginning again and take the shortest route, the 12 mile route. Then Friday night before the ride I decided it would be better to take the 50 mile route and cut if off and back over to the 25 mile route which would give me at least something more than 25 but yet still be less than 50 which I didn't think I wanted to do. I even had it all planned out where I was going to cut over. Yesterday around the time I got to the first rest stop I had pretty much decided to scrap that idea and just do the entire 50 mile route. It was a challenge I just couldn't pass up.

This years ride went entirely different from last years. The route was pretty much the same but since I was familiar with it I paced myself better and finished strong. I was worn down by the end but I never felt completely tapped out the whole time. I felt like a million bucks at the end. I think next year I'll either take it at a quicker pace or do the 65 mile route. That's 364 days away and counting.

George Bush is not a monster

George Bush in not a monster after all. I did a short amount of research and found the original photo used for the one in my last post. I Googled the words, "Bush" and "corn" together (like this) and I found out I was right.

What's this?

I found this on some radical left-wing website. I don't remember what I was looking for when I found it but whatever it was, it was completely unrelated to this thing. It looks like he should be eating corn and someone pasted a photo of a cat in there instead.

Dick Cheney

All this is pretty old. We haven't heard much about Dick Cheney in the news since he shot that guy in a hunting accident.


I watched this VP debate. John Edwards was a weasel and Dick Cheney rocked. At least that's how I saw it.

Tuxedo Cat

I discovered today that they have a name for the coloring of cats like my cat Socks. They call them "tuxedo" cats. It makes a lot of sense now that I know this and I can hardly believe I've never heard of this before today. I think his tuxedo fits him quite nicely. His white coloring doesn't spill over any edges which would diminish the tuxedo effect.

In this other photo you can see Socks near my Spri Xercise ball. I've thought about training him to walk on top of it like the monkeys at the circus do. I think if any animal would be good at walking around on top of a rolling ball it would be a cat. Cats are supposed to have great balancing abilities. They're brains are probably about walnut sized or something but relative to other mammals a lot more of their brain mass is cerebellum so their balance and motor skills are real good. I think if I can pull this off it'll be great entertainment for any guests I have over. Although even if I manage to get him comfortable doing this, he's pretty shy when people come over so it'll really be a miracle if I can get him to do it then.

Some random, mostly irrelevant things

Right now I'm eating a can of Del Monte French Style Fresh Cut green beans. I don't have enough vegetables in my diet most of the time. Steaming them is the best way to make them I think. I put them in a cereal bowl and eat them with a fork.

Someone pulled out in front of me on the way home from work today. I used my horn. I somehow managed to make an exceptionally cool sounding stuttering beep with it. This minivan already had some sizeable dents in the side so the dude who drives it has evidently already been in an accident with it. There was no accident today but if there had been one, I'm in good hands with Allstate. President Palmer would forgive me because Allstate has accident forgiveness.

I've switched now to eating Planters Peanuts. I don't think peanuts are a vegetable but I'm not positive. I'm not sure what they are except that they are good. I get the kind that come in a glass jar and don't have the shells on them anymore. I don't like to have to work through a shell first to get at my peanuts.

For some strange reason I've encountered the number 666 several times recently. At work I quoted a customer a part we sell and we had exactly 666 in stock. I happened to glance down at my odometer as I left work one day and I had 36,666 miles on my truck. There's been 1 or 2 other times something with that number came up besides these 2 instances but I can't remember exactly what they were. I think one of them was a file size on my computer or something or maybe something on my receipt from the grocery store. I'm not particularly freaked out by this or anything but it does seem unusual.

I own a black cat and he crosses my path every day. I'm not superstitious about that. He's mostly black anyway. My cat likes to be combed. I can't figure out what kind of music he likes. I have about 50 samples of bird sounds on my computer and that's usually something he finds very interesting.

I'm eating carrots now. They are the baby-cut kind. These are much more convenient than buying regular long carrots and stripping the outsides off of them before I can eat them. Carrots like these are probably 90% of my vegetable intake. I think I'm going to eat some cantaloupe next.

It's getting dark outside now much earlier than I'm happy with. Tonight I came home and crammed down a turkey sandwich as soon as I walked in the door just so I could get out early enough on my bike before it got dark. As it was I just barely got an hour of riding in. It was pretty dark near the end too. Now I'm eating all this food because my dinner was only that sandwich. I didn't want to eat very big before I went out riding. I managed to get 15.5 miles into 57 minutes.

I'm going to be getting a new computer at work soon. It's about time. My computer I have now is from 2000 I think. At least I upgraded myself with Windows XP some time ago which is more than anyone else at work has. Sadly most of the clients on our network are running on Window 98. I don't think I would go to work if I only had Windows 98 there. It works sufficiently for the needs of most of our users but not for me. One the bright side I don't have to run about the office executing updates on those computers anymore. I'm going to get a flat panel monitor and so I can rearrange my desk and where I put my phone. This might be almost as great as getting a raise.

My Rubic's cube I still leave unfinished but I am getting other things done. I still have more things to do though that I never seem to get to. I do have some more miles on my bike and I have finally hit a golf ball this year. My golf clubs sat still in my garage until late in August. Earlier in the spring I never would have imagined that happening the way it did. One thing I haven't yet gotten at yet is filling up my aquarium which I bought a long while ago now along with some of the filtration equipment and sea salt etc. I think where I left off was contemplating the rock and gravel colors and picking out some fish that would get along with each other. I took that photo below so long ago now it still shows my old dining room table and chairs in it and my 7 foot ficus I bought at Stein's isn't in the corner there yet.

I was wrong

It doesn't happen very often but this time I was wrong about my cyclocomputer. It turns out that it will display more than 999.9 miles before it goes back to zero. I have a strong suspicion the battery in it will die before I reach 9999.9 miles. It's more likely I'll be using a different computer altogether on a different bike. I might have to get this new bike before fall this year or otherwise wait until closer to next spring. I'm not sure I could handle it to buy a new bike in the winter but then not be able to ride it until all the way to spring. It would be like getting golf clubs for Christmas. I can see myself walking past my shiny new bike each day as it sits in my garage. All the while I'm freezing my butt off wishing for spring to come so I can actually ride it around. I've seen people out riding around in some real cold weather but I personally like it to be at least 60 degrees.

2006 miles

This is my cyclocomputer. The odometer is about to go back to zero so I took a photo of it before that happens.


I made a chart with my cumulative mileage for last year and this year. This year looks pretty pathetic compared with last year. I'm sure I'll never match last years total mileage. I'm not even going to try. The bottom of the chart is the number of days starting with 1 on June 1. It ends with 138 which was October 16th and the last day I rode my bike in 2005. Today is the 80th day since the first of June so obviously the chart ends there for 2006. Next year I'm definitely planning to beat 2005. I'm going to shoot for 850-900 miles. I think I'm going to get a new bike before that too so I'm not sure it will be a completely fair comparison. I'm going to get something a bit lighter.

Vortex

I mentioned in an earlier post that I've started keeping a backup of everything on my computer on another hard drive which I keep at work. That way if my house burns down or blows away in a tornado I haven't lost all of my photos and music and all that. It occurred to me that there is yet another reason I should be doing this. I saw a vortex suck in and entire house in a movie one time. I assume then it must be possible but I'm pretty sure this won't happen. I think my condo is built over old farmland and not an old Indian burial ground like in the movie.

Caterpillars....lots of them.

Bigger, more and better photos here.

This reminds me of a movie that was on TV when I was a kid. Except in the movie I'm remembering it was tarantulas and not caterpillars like this.

I just looked it up on the IMDB and I think it must be "Kingdom of the Spiders" I'm thinking of. I don't remember William Shatner being in it but he was. I wouldn't have known who he was when I was 5 but I'm sure that would have been before TJ Hooker.

I copied a DVD

I burned a DVD tonight that was a copy of one I own. I did it just to try it out. The rewritable discs I have aren't the Dual Layer kind. I didn't want to waste a regular non-rewritable DL disc if I did something wrong during the rip and burn processes so I had to search my shelf for a DVD that wasn't Dual Layer. Most of them are as it turns out. Copying a DVD is pretty simple. I can see myself doing it. I probably shouldn't but I'm pretty sure I will at some point. I copied this movie I bought for $3 or something at Best Buy one time. It barely rates a "B" horror movie but it was cheap enough and interesting looking enough for me to buy it. It's called "Pieces" and the tagline on the box says, "It's exactly what you think it is!" The cover has a picture of a chainsaw and a woman with stitches circling various points on her body…neck, arms, wrists, legs, and knees. She looks sort of "pieced" together. At only $3 doesn't that sound intriguing? Anyway it's only a single layer DVD so as an experiment I ripped it and then burned a copy of it. This copy works just like the original. Thankfully I only used a rewritable disc so I can use it again later on for something else more worthwhile.

Stayin' Cool

It's real hot here lately. Today I'm staying inside. It feels kind of dumb because it's Saturday and I should be outside because it's summertime. It's just too darn hot and humid for anything outside. Instead I'm inside playing with my new DVD burner. I realized after I installed the thing that the box says I should have a minimum of a Pentium 4, 1.4 GHz processor. I have only half of that. So far it hasn't mattered any though. I burned a couple DVDs without issue. I've used rewritables mostly because I'm not totally confident yet I know what I'm doing and also because I'm not certain some of the material is worthy of a permanently burned DVD.

I found out my DVD player won't play any DVD's I burn....or I should say at least none so far. I'm assuming my player is too old. I probably should have figured on this but I didn't. I got a top of the line Sony DVD player in 1999. I paid like $800 for it. This was back when they had greater numbers of VHS tapes at Blockbuster than DVDs for rent. I remember they'd have 2 or 3 copies of a new release on DVD and you could walk in and get one of them even if it was on a Friday or Saturday. Anyway I figured I'd be OK compatability-wise with my DVD player but so far I haven't been.

Instead of using my Sony DVD player, I figured out I can play my burned DVDs using my Playstation 2. It took a little time figuring out how to connect it to my receiver and get the digital surround sound working but only because I don't normally hook it up that way.
I watched DVD number 1 of 3 of a Led Zeppelin show from Earl's Court in London 1975. I downloaded this set of DVDs from Boot City a while back and now I was finally able to watch some of it. As I watched it I thought about how amazing it was that I had this show to watch in my own living room and about how far technology has come that people can do this. It didn't take much effort on my part.

My New Toys

I got some new toys this week. It's like my birthday but it isn't. Since I've been filling up my hard drives downloading torrents on Boot City and Dime I've needed to buy more drives. This week I got another one plus a DVD burner. I'm up to 5 drives altogether with a combined 920GB of capacity. My 20GB drive that has been in my computer from the start I keep pretty much empty except for Windows. It's getting to be an older drive and I don't trust it much (and especially since I had these issues which thankfully haven't resurfaced). A long while back when I was working at home building a website I picked up a 120GB drive that I thought would last forever. I've since filled up that with digital photos, music, and dumb videos from the internet. More recently I picked up 2 more drives. One has 160GB capacity and the other has 300GB which I use for backups of all the others since CD-R's aren't a practical option anymore. The 300GB drive I use for a backup only and I store it at my work in case my house blows away in a tornado or burns to the ground or something. If I survive at least all the photo's I've taken and all the music I've downloaded won't be gone too.Since I've filled up the 160GB drive too now I got a new drive this week. This one is 320GB which once I formatted it, ends up with about 298GB of usable space. Now I'm shifting my previous backup drive to home which should ease the pressure for a while. Plus I have my other new toy, my DVD burner, so I can archive some things that way if I want to. I got the burner less for backups and more because I've got a few DVD's I've downloaded and I want to burn them.